Volvo Abandons Premium Segment Quest

Volvo's new boss, Stefan Jacoby, has stated that Volvo must move on from its quest to be considered a premium brand. The Swedish automaker was recently sold to Chinese firm Geely by Ford. Instead of chasing after BMW, Mercedes, and Audi, Jacoby says to "let's ditch this talk about premium...it sounds like a pricing strategy and it's got an expensive ring to it. We need to focus on elegant Scandinavian simplicity, our own unique identity, and not copy our competitors."

With this newfound and more logical strategy in mind, Volvo hopes to achieve 800,000 sales per year by 2020, which is more than double of the 380,000 units expected to be sold in 2010. In terms of marketing in the US, Jacoby admits his firm has "lost some ground...we're at the bottom, looking up." This new thinking makes much more sense for Volvo, as they will never be thought of in the same sentence as their German competitors. It's best for them to focus on what they do best: safety and IKEA-like simplicity (minus the cheap materials).